The broken quiet of mourning

The benefits to working in the morning is that my body likes to wake up earlier than it used to. I felt pulled from my bed at 6:30am, which is sleeping in for me now that I normally have to be out of bed by 5am.

I stumbled around getting my dog his morning kibble while my roommate rushed about getting herself out the door. She let me know that she made coffee the way I like it today and she left; there was just enough for me to enjoy one cup.

I sat down and pulled out my computer in order to do a little morning writing. I am only a few days away from getting started on NaNoWriMo and I still don’t have all my planning done.

When I write, I like to listen to music and today it’s Friday and that means that there’s new music for me to enjoy. I was surprised to find a love note from the late Gord Downie waiting for me. I let out a few tears as I put on his solo album “Introduce Yerself“. There was a little video introducing the album that was the trigger for my tears.

Until this moment, I had been filled with a sense of relief that Gord’s pain was over but I had no idea that he had one more musical love note to share with the world after his death on October 17, 2017. Through my listening of this album I have gotten a better sense of his acceptance of his fate and his desire to not want to say goodbye but rather to encourage us all to go out and live our lives in our own way and not mourn for him.

I read a line recently about grief and it was that grief is just deep love that cannot be received. Not in the way that unrequited love cannot be received but that kind of love that holds in your heart and become painful because the recipient cannot heart it. Canada is grieving for its beloved national treasure, Gord Downie; even our prime minister has expressed his grief publicly in the wake of the singer’s death.

Gord didn’t want to say goodbye, he wanted us to see his life through his eyes. Here’s the full album for you to enjoy on Spotify Canada. Make sure you give yourself time to really listen to his words and enjoy the poetry of them.